Microsoft Flow • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Flow

#91

Post by coldtea » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

soared wrote: post #88

justsaysmthng wrote: post #37

Just watched the "how it works" video and I'm less than impressed (can anything impress me these days?). "Why constantly check e-mail when you can get a text message when anyone important e-mails you..." Actually, I receive a push notification whenever I receive an email. I'd hate to receive SMS messages instead of e-mails. --- "Say someone tweets something about your company. Set up a flow that follows them, sends a…

Is it so difficult for you to imagine someone who doesn't have push notifications enabled? I don't like being alerted by emails, but that means I sometimes miss time-sensitive messages from my boss. I would actually like texts when my boss emails me, because that would be the only alert I get outside of normal SMS.

Sure, but that's a narrow niche for "push"-averting people.

Hardly something to write home about for "working smarter" in general.

Re: Microsoft Flow

#92

Post by sheraz » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

crandycodes wrote: post #72

sheraz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I was going to say. I setup some logic apps but never really dug into this much beyond their demos. Following on the heels of this will be Azure's Functions (Serverless/Lambda) architecture, which will overlap some things here (for devs).

/* I'm a PM on Azure Functions */ Logic Apps and Flow are done by the same team, actually, so that's no surprise. Logic Apps is for "Azure" users, which is mostly IT Pros and Dev. Flow is intended to compliment Power Apps. They can both be built by users aren't necessarily pro devs, but can use a drag-n-drop interface for configuring things. Functions are code driven by events. Logic Apps are workflow driven by event…

LOVE WHEN THIS HAPPENS (and so many reasons why I love Hacker News :-)

I'm in the Bizspark++ Program -- and I've had a blast playing and learning with all of the Azure products -- and I'm really looking forward to seeing improvements on Python and Bash functions.

Keep it up, I'll be stalking your documentation updates :-)

Re: Microsoft Flow

#93

Post by coldtea » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 6:58 PM UTC

justsaysmthng wrote: post #37

Just watched the "how it works" video and I'm less than impressed (can anything impress me these days?). "Why constantly check e-mail when you can get a text message when anyone important e-mails you..." Actually, I receive a push notification whenever I receive an email. I'd hate to receive SMS messages instead of e-mails. --- "Say someone tweets something about your company. Set up a flow that follows them, sends a…

>I don't know about the Flow service, but the ad video is quite dumb and uninspired, just like the background music.. who composes all these identical tech ad songs ?

Ad composers with a production note: "Make it bland and copying for the Nth time, 2010-era Apple video music".

And stock music services, like this: https://www.musicbed.com/

Re: Microsoft Flow

#94

Post by georgehotelling » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

skocznymroczny wrote: post #32

Good thing they picked up a unique name that won't collide with any other similar named projects.

Someone should send a Lync message to them about writing a Linq query to find all the links for projects with similar names.

Re: Microsoft Flow

#95

Post by apeace » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 7:29 PM UTC

pella wrote: post #3

a new IFTTT competitor. more alternatives: * https://github.com/pjf/exobrain * https://github.com/cantino/huginn/ * https://github.com/bipio-server/bipio * https://github.com/ottawaruby/whenbot

Another popular option is: https://zapier.com/

Re: Microsoft Flow

#96

Post by clamanna » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:25 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #29

They have more integrations than are showing on the home page, but the only way to see the full list is to sign up. I uploaded some screen shots showing the available services/integrations: http://imgur.com/a/NR7Af

There are 35+ services supported today, with new ones planned each week for quite some time.

Also, it is possible to register your own REST APIs and share them with others in your organization.

Within Microsoft, we have a lot of internal custom APIs registered to light up some interesting automations / flows. Details here: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/tutorials/register-cus...

Disclaimer: am a dev on the team

Re: Microsoft Flow

#97

Post by clamanna » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 8:40 PM UTC

spdustin wrote: post #21

huac wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

assume they're doing a soft launch with o365 for business customers before full launch

It's been turned on for some time now. Just no marketing push that I've seen. Quietly hidden away on Azure under another name, IIRC. It's early still, though, and my memory is going a bit. :)

The earlier offering was Azure Logic Apps, which is different than Microsoft Flow.

Logic Apps is offered as part of Azure and is targeted at developers and IT shops. Logic Apps are much more about heavy weight integration (e.g. business-to-business communications, back-office connectivity to SAP), akin to Biztalk. Details here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app...

On the other hand, Flow is aimed at business end users with light weight connectivity / automation needs (e.g. the examples in the video on the home page). It does not have support for a lot of things devs or IT need, like source control, monitoring, scripting, etc.

Disclaimer: did dev work for both. Hope that helps!

Re: Microsoft Flow

#98

Post by seang » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 9:30 PM UTC

skocznymroczny wrote: post #32

Good thing they picked up a unique name that won't collide with any other similar named projects.

I'm glad someone else thought this. Almost seems like an elaborate ruse to hide the other flows. Or for their service to never be found again.

Re: Microsoft Flow

#99

Post by tryitnow » Sat, Apr 30, 2016, 10:01 PM UTC

justsaysmthng wrote: post #37

Just watched the "how it works" video and I'm less than impressed (can anything impress me these days?). "Why constantly check e-mail when you can get a text message when anyone important e-mails you..." Actually, I receive a push notification whenever I receive an email. I'd hate to receive SMS messages instead of e-mails. --- "Say someone tweets something about your company. Set up a flow that follows them, sends a…

Interesting. I love the idea of this product, I work in finance and accounting and I'm already thinking of ways to apply.

However, the examples used in this video are awful for the reasons you outlined. Plus, there's already good software solutions for email management and social media monitoring.

I think this ad is pretty bad, but the actual product could revolutionize workflow in many business functions.

Re: Microsoft Flow

#100

Post by PapaSlug » Fri, May 06, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #14

If the developers are reading this, when I watch the video in Opera and make it full screen the video doesn't stay centered and I can only see half of it. It's falling off the left side of the page.

Also on iPad (Safari)